Abstract

The assumed deterioration of the students’ health conditions in many universities of China poses challenges for the future. The prevalence of students lacking exercise in the universities has increased dramatically in recent decades, leading to increased research interest in treatment and forestallment. Among these research, gamification has been studied as an obvious advantage in motivating attitudinal and behavioral change. This study explores the use of gamification when applied to a mobile application targeted at motivating university students to do more physical activity. This paper describes the foundations of a design framework used to integrate game elements to LOOP, a gamification-based application with LBS (Location Based Service) for smart phones. The system is explained in terms of the design framework and the findings of the experiment for usability. The purpose of this study is testing the first iteration of the application, exploring how different game elements would affect user experience.

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Acknowledgement

This paper is sponsored by Shanghai Pujiang Program (13PJC072), Shanghai Philosopy and Social Science Program (2012BCK001), Shanghai Jiao Tong University Interdisciplinary among Hunmnity, Social Science and Natural Science Fund (13JCY02). Moreover, we thank to the students of Shang-hai Jiao Tong University who contributed to this research.